der freier als ich, der Gott
May. 20th, 2023 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI went to go see Die Walküre with the local opera company! (I missed Das Rheingold a few years ago -- I really wanted to see it, I think I was out of town.) The local opera company has had some troubles with having enough audience for the operas, so they've slashed the number of performances from 2 to 1, and then for this opera they showed it in the smaller theater, not the big theater that I've seen e.g. La Traviata at. This had certain issues. The theater is not big enough to have a huge pit orchestra; I think to make a pit at all you have to give up some of the seats? (I think?) -- so they had a slimmed-down orchestra (the entire opera seems to have been "arranged" by someone for a small regional opera company, with a smaller orchestra and also abridgement of the music/text), and put the orchestra on stage. Personally I loved this. I love seeing the orchestra, I love having an idea of what instruments are playing when, I love getting to think things like "huh, someone thought about not having the violins playing for three hours straight." But the lady sitting next to me really didn't like it at all. Oh well. Anyway, and then a big problem was that if the singers were near the back of the stage, their voices didn't carry at all, and since most characters entered from near the back, this was a problem for dramatic entrances.
As you can imagine it was a very spare production, which works very well for Walküre. (IDK how they're going to do Siegfried, though, if they do it next year or in another couple of years. Maybe they won't do it?) Basically the set was: some sticks artfully arranged, suggesting an entryway on one side of the stage. (The sword Nothung was also thrust into it at the beginning.) The sticks also had lights attached, which changed color for different scenes (e.g., at the fire at the end they glowed red and orange; I think they might have been bright neon colors to signify Valhalla). I feel like my description makes it sound tacky but it wasn't; I thought it was really really effective, especially given their constraints. The choreography was also excellent, not in the sense that one noticed it particularly, but in the sense that one didn't notice it but thinking about it afterwards they clearly did make good use of their small space, you always got the sense that characters were interacting and not that they were wandering aimlessly.
And all the singers were great. I mean, it's a regional opera company, we're not getting Met stars or anything (plus which I suspect that one of the side effects of having a small venue and small orchestra meant that you don't have to have quite the Wagnerian volume that you presumably have to have in a large opera house and having to sing over a whole orchestra), but they were totally worth hearing for three hours. In my opinion Wotan stole the show; he was the same guy (Wayne Tigge) I saw play an extremely scenery-chewing Scarpia when I saw Tosca in the fall (he got a ton of boos, he was great), only Wotan gave him more scope and more breadth to do character work than Scarpia had. I wished I had got a seat closer so I could watch his face better, and if they'd had a second production I would have legit considered seeing it again just for him :D The Brünnhilde singer was also very good, quite a character in her own right, and had a great rapport with Wotan; one thing I hadn't seen before was that both Wotan and Brünnhilde were just having a lot of fun with each other in their opening scene (the text supports Brünnhilde having fun, but the Wotans I've seen on video have been more reserved even then). Siegmund and Sieglinde were also great (I mean, I basically watch this opera for "So grüße mir Walhall" and it was great, and his Siegmund was believably in love and gentle to Sieglinde, while out of his mind with grief at his impending death and parting from her), although I felt like Sieglinde's big "O hehrstes Wunder" didn't come off quite as it was supposed to due to either the general acoustics or where I was sitting in particular (as she was facing away from me). Hunding was great though his voice wasn't quite as loud as Siegmund's or Sieglinde's; Fricka was also great although she had an annoying tendency of raising her hands when she sang.
Okay, I'm going to put my Philistine hat on now. I was VERY happy about almost all the cuts. There's a lot you have to have for the story, and then there's just a lot that is kind of... repetitive :P Do we need to have Siegmund's description of the ash tree? Do we really need to have Sieglinde and Siegmund talking for ages about how Hunding is chasing them? (We already know that from Fricka and if we didn't catch that, Brünnhilde tells him later.) They cut both of those and I was a big fan. They did keep all the deep myth/philosophy bits in the beginning of Act 2 with Wotan's conversations with Fricka and Brünnhilde, and that too is right, in my opinion.
The two cuts I didn't like were a) they cut Siegmund talking about how his father had promised him a sword, which made Fricka's assertion of the same a little later sound a bit weird, and b) they cut Wotan's whole address to Hunding after Siegmund is killed: "Geh hin, Knecht!" and I am Put Out about this because it's one of my favorite parts and our Wotan would have done it spectacularly. It's important both dramatically and character-wise!
Also, Brünnhilde got a hug near the end from Wotan, which, YEAH. I think I am just a fan of sopranos getting hugs from their father-figures? But in general I felt like this production really leaned hard on Die Walküre being fundamentally about Wotan and Brünnhilde's relationship, more so than about Siegmund and Sieglinde's romance and tragedy or Wotan's dilemma (which I'd always focused on before) -- aided by the minimalist set, I think, and also by Wotan and Brünnhilde having super father-daughter chemistry. I loved it.
So, yeah, I would still love to see this in a big opera house someday, but I am very very pleased with getting to see it live <3
As you can imagine it was a very spare production, which works very well for Walküre. (IDK how they're going to do Siegfried, though, if they do it next year or in another couple of years. Maybe they won't do it?) Basically the set was: some sticks artfully arranged, suggesting an entryway on one side of the stage. (The sword Nothung was also thrust into it at the beginning.) The sticks also had lights attached, which changed color for different scenes (e.g., at the fire at the end they glowed red and orange; I think they might have been bright neon colors to signify Valhalla). I feel like my description makes it sound tacky but it wasn't; I thought it was really really effective, especially given their constraints. The choreography was also excellent, not in the sense that one noticed it particularly, but in the sense that one didn't notice it but thinking about it afterwards they clearly did make good use of their small space, you always got the sense that characters were interacting and not that they were wandering aimlessly.
And all the singers were great. I mean, it's a regional opera company, we're not getting Met stars or anything (plus which I suspect that one of the side effects of having a small venue and small orchestra meant that you don't have to have quite the Wagnerian volume that you presumably have to have in a large opera house and having to sing over a whole orchestra), but they were totally worth hearing for three hours. In my opinion Wotan stole the show; he was the same guy (Wayne Tigge) I saw play an extremely scenery-chewing Scarpia when I saw Tosca in the fall (he got a ton of boos, he was great), only Wotan gave him more scope and more breadth to do character work than Scarpia had. I wished I had got a seat closer so I could watch his face better, and if they'd had a second production I would have legit considered seeing it again just for him :D The Brünnhilde singer was also very good, quite a character in her own right, and had a great rapport with Wotan; one thing I hadn't seen before was that both Wotan and Brünnhilde were just having a lot of fun with each other in their opening scene (the text supports Brünnhilde having fun, but the Wotans I've seen on video have been more reserved even then). Siegmund and Sieglinde were also great (I mean, I basically watch this opera for "So grüße mir Walhall" and it was great, and his Siegmund was believably in love and gentle to Sieglinde, while out of his mind with grief at his impending death and parting from her), although I felt like Sieglinde's big "O hehrstes Wunder" didn't come off quite as it was supposed to due to either the general acoustics or where I was sitting in particular (as she was facing away from me). Hunding was great though his voice wasn't quite as loud as Siegmund's or Sieglinde's; Fricka was also great although she had an annoying tendency of raising her hands when she sang.
Okay, I'm going to put my Philistine hat on now. I was VERY happy about almost all the cuts. There's a lot you have to have for the story, and then there's just a lot that is kind of... repetitive :P Do we need to have Siegmund's description of the ash tree? Do we really need to have Sieglinde and Siegmund talking for ages about how Hunding is chasing them? (We already know that from Fricka and if we didn't catch that, Brünnhilde tells him later.) They cut both of those and I was a big fan. They did keep all the deep myth/philosophy bits in the beginning of Act 2 with Wotan's conversations with Fricka and Brünnhilde, and that too is right, in my opinion.
The two cuts I didn't like were a) they cut Siegmund talking about how his father had promised him a sword, which made Fricka's assertion of the same a little later sound a bit weird, and b) they cut Wotan's whole address to Hunding after Siegmund is killed: "Geh hin, Knecht!" and I am Put Out about this because it's one of my favorite parts and our Wotan would have done it spectacularly. It's important both dramatically and character-wise!
Also, Brünnhilde got a hug near the end from Wotan, which, YEAH. I think I am just a fan of sopranos getting hugs from their father-figures? But in general I felt like this production really leaned hard on Die Walküre being fundamentally about Wotan and Brünnhilde's relationship, more so than about Siegmund and Sieglinde's romance and tragedy or Wotan's dilemma (which I'd always focused on before) -- aided by the minimalist set, I think, and also by Wotan and Brünnhilde having super father-daughter chemistry. I loved it.
So, yeah, I would still love to see this in a big opera house someday, but I am very very pleased with getting to see it live <3
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Date: 2023-05-21 12:15 am (UTC)Yay!
Seriously.
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Date: 2023-05-23 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-21 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-23 05:43 am (UTC)Yes!! It's just really cool that way! Which I'd also forgotten (though like I said I'd seen videos before) and was like "do I really want to go see three hours of this?" and was very pleased to find out the answer was yes!
the moment that's stuck in my mind is Wotan, played by a very slight man in our production, thundering the word "GO!" at someone who he wants to take a message to Valhalla. I don't recall whether the word itself is what strikes the messenger dead, but it felt like that. I hadn't know the human voice could do that!
YES. The first time I watched (on video) I was just completely overwhelmed by that moment, which I had no idea was coming.
...And it was one of the bits that was CUT from this production, which, while I like all the other cuts, I CANNOT FORGIVE IT FOR.
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Date: 2023-05-23 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-23 07:55 am (UTC)The two cuts I didn't like were a) they cut Siegmund talking about how his father had promised him a sword, which made Fricka's assertion of the same a little later sound a bit weird,
Also, it robs the Siegmund singer of one of the showcases for Wagner tenors, the "Wälse!" cries. I mean, they can't all be Lauritz Melchior who made this one of his signature pieces, but still...
What did become of Hunding if Wotan didn't dismiss him from life with "GEH!"? Did he just slink off stage?
Other than that, it does sound like a compelling production. I would agree that the Wotan & Brünnhilde relationship is at the heart not just of this opera but arguably of the Ring, though I would also argue both Siegmund and Sieglinde are the most sympathetic human characters, much more so than their son, and that any good production of Die Walküre must have therefore good Sieglindes and Siegmunds as well.
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Date: 2023-05-25 05:35 am (UTC)I think Wotan did make some kind of motion and Hunding definitely fell down and died. So I guess... if you didn't already know what was going on you could have figured out that Wotan killed him in his grief... but it's important that Wotan was sending him to Fricka to say he'd done what she asked! I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.
I would agree that the Wotan & Brünnhilde relationship is at the heart not just of this opera but arguably of the Ring, though I would also argue both Siegmund and Sieglinde are the most sympathetic human characters, much more so than their son, and that any good production of Die Walküre must have therefore good Sieglindes and Siegmunds as well.
Yes! I agree with all of this (<3 Siegmund and Sieglinde!), although I guess I'd never really thought about Wotan & Brünnhilde being the heart of the Ring before, but yes, now that you say it I entirely concur.
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Date: 2023-05-25 06:03 am (UTC):) Lauritz Melchior holds some kind of record for this. He was THE Wagnerian Heldentenor of his generation. To make you like him: he actually started out as a baritone and would still do baritone stuff now and then in between wowing people as a tenor. To quote from his life description:
By this time, Melchior was an apprentice artist with Copenhagen’s Royal Opera. It was here that the 23 year old singer made his official debut as Silvio in Pagliacci on April 2, 1913. Other roles followed, most of them comprimario parts, including Morales in Carmen, Baron Douphol in La Traviata, and Brander in Faust. It was while singing di Luna during a 1916 tour of Il Trovatore, however, that Melchior gave a hint of his capabilities. To accommodate an anxious soprano, Melchior interpolated a high C at the end of the Leonora/di Luna duet. Celebrated contralto Sarah Cahier, who was singing Azucena, pulled the young man aside after the performance and quipped, “You’re no baritone. You’re a tenor with the lid on!” With Cahier’s help, Melchior received a paid sabbatical from the Royal Opera and began retraining his voice with famed Danish tenor Vilhelm Herold. On October 8, 1918, Melchior made his tenor debut as Tannhäuser with the Royal Opera. After this single performance, however, the young tenor was sent back to the comprimario ranks. Luckily, Melchior’s fortunes would soon change in a big way.
During a series of London performances in the fall of 1920, Melchior was introduced to the British novelist, Hugh Walpole. So impressed was Walpole that he agreed to underwrite the tenor’s career. Melchior relocated to London in 1922 and began working toward developing into a genuine Heldentenor. Things moved rather quickly after that, with Melchior contracted to sing Siegmund in Die Walküre at Covent Garden. Upon arriving in London on the day of the performance, the tenor revealed to conductor Bruno Walter that he had never sung the role with orchestra! So, in spite of no rehearsal and only having sung the role with piano, Melchior scored a tremendous success in his Covent Garden debut on May 14, 1924. On July 23 of the same year, he made his Bayreuth debut as Parsifal. Melchior’s Met debut took place on February 17, 1926 as Tannhäuser. During his 24 year tenure there, the tenor sang 519 performances of only seven roles…all of them Wagner.
Now, that many Wagner parts would have destroyed the voices of lesser men.* But not of the mighty Dane. Also, he seems to have been a stand-up guy: he could have had The Very Worst Fanboy Of All give him the superstar treatment when said fanboy was in power, but no, Lauritz Melchior was a good character as well as a good tenor, showed solidarity with his Jewish colleagues and chose to sing in the US instead.
*Famously, the Ur-Tristan, the very first guy to sing the part died on stage. Not at the premiere, and after years of singing it, but still, he did die during a performance. And of course for all the personality issues I have with him, anyone singing Siegfried has to show true heroic voice abilities because after two acts of singing already, he's up in the third act against a completely relaxed and fresh heroic soprano in Siegfried. Rare are the Siegfrieds who don't get bowled over by their Brünhildes vocally as well as emotionally...
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Date: 2023-06-04 06:18 pm (UTC)You're no baritone.
Hee!
he had never sung the role with orchestra!
GOSH. No rehearsal?? That's Something.
Now, that many Wagner parts would have destroyed the voices of lesser men.
Tell me about it! Way fewer than that destroy people's voices, omg!
Lauritz Melchoir was a good character as well as a good tenor
Oh, I LOVE that. I love when people who are good artists are also awesome people.
Oh, and also....
Date: 2023-05-25 03:50 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, and also....
Date: 2023-05-31 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-24 03:32 am (UTC)ahh "So grüße mir Walhall" is SUCH a good moment.
minimal sets can be such fun when they are well done! I saw a production of Giulio Cesare that had exactly two props: a purple velvet chaise longue and a severed head. It was great.
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Date: 2023-05-25 05:45 am (UTC)and haha about the arrangement, I was surprised by it too at first but it really worked well for this company's needs and resources.
ahh "So grüße mir Walhall" is SUCH a good moment.
YESSSSSS
minimal sets can be such fun when they are well done! I saw a production of Giulio Cesare that had exactly two props: a purple velvet chaise longue and a severed head. It was great.
omg that sounds hilariously awesome! Whoever does the sets for our local company is great, I've gone to several operas with them over the last couple of years and they've all been minimal (had to be) and all worked quite well.
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Date: 2023-05-24 12:39 pm (UTC)Putting the orchestra on stage, if acoustically odd, is a fascinating idea! I would love to see that. I wonder what the orchestra thought about it?
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Date: 2023-05-25 05:58 am (UTC)Ohhhh Fortissimo sounds so up my alley that I bought the e-book today. He is indeed in it! :D
Having the orchestra on-stage reminded me of the concert performances one sees sometimes, only of course it was actually staged. I don't know, that's a good question about the orchestra! I imagine it's nice to have a more starring role (so to speak) than one usually gets, and to be able to see the action -- but also it seems potentially annoying to have to be on-stage all the time and never get to, idk, fidget, when I would think opera pit musicians are probably used to having a little more freedom that way?